SVP Fast Pitch Showdown

Wednesday night at McCaw Hall was the culmination of over 11 months work for ZINO Society in partnership with Social Venture Partners to produce their 3rd Annual SVP Fast Pitch Showdown.  There were literally thousands of details and decisions that were made over that space of time and hundreds of hours invested by entrepreneur innovators, volunteers and staff to present the final 14 pitches onstage in the Susan Brotman Auditorium at McCaw Hall.

In my opinion and from what I heard from many attendees that evening, this 2013 SVP Fast Pitch Showdown was by far the best to date.  Some of the challenges of the past couple of years which included leaky tents, unused assigned seating, an overly long program and registration and name tag snafus were all eliminated and 95% of the event went flawlessly.

The ZINO Society team members including Christine Gilbert, Meg Landies, Claire Dillow, Emma Landis and Ana Ongko, were on their game along with dozens of other volunteers and SVP team members!

Some of the best untold stories of challenges overcome this year were these which I thought you might enjoy . . .

SVP Executive Connector, Paul Shoemaker and SVP Fast Pitch Founder Will Poole did an excellent job of serving as co-emcees at the beginning of the evening.  As the program progressed, Paul's role was to introduce each presenting Social Innovator onstage and hand them the slide advancer aka "clicker".  Early in the evening, Paul accidentally dropped the slide advancer and it broke into several pieces with the battery rolling one direction and parts and pieces skittering about the stage.  Paul had to run around the stage finding the pieces and trying to put it back together which everyone saw.  Of course, the slide advancer didn't work once it was reassembled.

When the slide advancer hit the stage floor, the part of the story that no one saw except a startled usher who told her she shouldn't run in McCaw Hall was what ZINO Society Dealflow Manager, Meg Landies, who was managing the Innovators backstage, quickly did.  She dropped everything and ran at full speed from backstage all the way through the hallways, stairways and corridors of the bowels of backstage bursting out into the public spaces but still at the opposite side of McCaw Hall from the registration area where she needed to go.  When she arrived, she immediately retrieved the ZINO Society backup slide advancer from her bag and then sprinted all the way back to backstage in record time.  She said she told the usher it was an emergency and that she had to run.  Meg told me she hadn't run that fast since high school and was nursing pulled muscles for the next two days afterwards.

When it was time for the Awards ceremony, ZINO Society Project Manager for the Fast Pitch event, Christine Gilbert, who had been involved in virtually every detail of the project had the oversize "photo op" checks in place at the raised platform along with the crystal awards that were to be handed out to each of the winners.When the first winner was announced by Paul Shoemaker and Will Poole, Christine stepped forward with the crystal award and promptly dropped it on the floor next to the stage where it immediately shattered.  The funny part was after the crystal award's untimely demise, Christine just kept standing up straight, smiling holding the empty velvet case in which the award had been sitting and pretended that nothing had happened.  Finally, Bob O'Hara ran forward to pick up the broken crystal pieces while Christine continued to maintain her upright posture in absolute denial that anything untoward had happened.  After that, 2013 SVP Fast Pitch Chairman, Patricia Friel traded jobs with Christine and had Christine manage handing the unbreakable oversize checks to Will and Paul while Patricia handled the crystal awards disposition.  All the rest of the checks and crystal awards made it safely into the recipients' hands.

For details of who won which awards, please click HERE to read a blog posting by Deborah Drake.

The entire event can be described in one word:  AWESOME!